Justice For The Damned Unleash ‘No Brother, No Friend’

‘No Brother, No Friend’: further proof that Justice For The Damned are one of the best Australian heavy bands going right now.

I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination to state that Justice For The Damned are easily one of the best bands in Australia right now. These NSW lads have played big and small stages across the country, including that of Unify Gathering back in 2017, to even touring Europe with Thy Art Is Murder. With all of this travelling and life experiences culminating over the last year and a half, that’s no doubt allowed the members to learn more about the world, but also about themselves too. And this internal setting is where so much of Justice For The Damned’s bleak music exists within but also shines through. After all, it’s what so much of their vehement, tough-as-nails debut LP, 2017’s solid ‘Dragged Through The Dirt‘, was built upon.

The four-piece’s newest single, the violent-as-hell and neck-breaking ‘No Brother, No Friend‘ (which premiered over at Metal Sucks), is very much the same in this sense. As it’s a grim outward expression of one’s inner-most self-hatred for the rest of the world to bear witness to. With the song’s general sentiment being that of its final lyric: “I am no brother, no friend, I am nothing/Nothing but a feast for the maggots below“. Huh, cheery.

Produced and tracked by Clayton Segelov (Gvrlls) over at The Brain Recording Studio, ‘No Brother, No Friend‘ is an absolute fucking monster! It’s classic Justice songwriting, really, but I’m not complaining when it’s this heavy and this well-written. From Nick Adams‘ blackened tremolo picking and chain-saw HM2 riffage, the song’s crushing grooves and heavy hardcore breakdowns (suss out 1:00 to 1:10), to both Chas Levi’s percussive hits and Bobak Rafiee’s vocal extremities. Combined with a disorientating and thriller-esque music video – directed, shot and edited by Crystal Arrow Films in the same house as their previous ‘Please Don’t Leave Me‘ clip – a song that’s basically the epitome of self-loathing truly comes to life, right before being buried six feet under.